It should read B natural,
not B flat. The metronome is the same in all editions, 160 to the
quarter, but speed should give way to breadth at all hazards. Von
Bulow is the only editor, to my knowledge, who makes an
enharmonic key change in this working-out section. It looks
neater, sounds the same, but is it Chopin? He also gives a
variant for public performance by transforming the last run in
unisono into a veritable hurricane by interlocked octaves. The
effect is brazen. Chopin needs no such clangorous padding in this
etude, which gains by legitimate strokes the most startling
contrasts.
The study is full of tremendous pathos; it compasses the sublime,
and in its most torrential moments the composer never quite loses
his mental equipoise. He, too, can evoke tragic spirits, and at
will send them scurrying back to their dim profound. It has but
one rival in the Chopin studies--No. 12, op. 25, in the same key.
II
Opus 25, twelve studies by Frederic Chopin, are dedicated to
Madame la Comtesse d'Agoult. The set opens with the familiar
study in A flat, so familiar that I shall not make further ado
about it except to say that it is delicious, but played often and
badly.
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